The Martyr's Morning
by Sincerely- AnonymousP
Summary: Harry wasn't sure how sane following the directions of bodiless voices made him but, well…you can't argue with the results. That and it wasn't like he knew what else to do.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the Avengers or Harry Potter, but...Skyfall was the greatest James Bond Movie ever!

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**The Morning's Martyr**

**Prologue**

It was the ache.

An ache so deep, reaching to the core of your bones and your body and everything that you are that consumed you in your darkness.

But not even the darkness could survive the despair. It was like a thick poison, festering and leeching in your very soul, filling it full with such unbearable anguish that it was left hollow. An empty shell, rotted in the middle from a black disease, a tar that dripped and stretched and burned everything it's inky hands could grasp.

It was burning you.

It was- _is- _burning and blistering away at everything that is you and everything that isn't. It doesn't make a difference.

Worse than the ache and the despair and the hollow soul and the burning tar that blisters, is the silence. The silence is filled with noise; you're sure of this- you can hear the pain, the sorrow, the screams, and the cries. You can _feel _it poundingthuddingbashing_beating_ against your brain in a steady rhythm of chaos.

But the sound is gone. It's there…but it's gone.

_He _took it away when He left; when you forced Him to leave, when you killed Him - _did you really kill him?_ - He took the noise and the smell and the taste and the touch and the sight.

You feel everything. But there is nothing there.

It is the ache.

So you search for it, you search for '_it_' whatever it is. You don't know but suddenly something else fills the nothingness. And you can _feel it. _So you look and you look and when _He _pushes against you, you force Him away. He's not gone, He's never gone, but you can almost feel 'it' touching you, an outstretched hand beckoning you just inches more forward.

And then…'its' there, flashing and swirling in the hollowness. The darkness comes back first, suffocating, but it passes quickly and then there's more. And then you remember.

Rubble was everywhere. Dull grey clumps spotted with small spots of color that blended together in a collage of throbbing, unsteady dyes. Some rang brighter than others. The fierce red stood, strong and unwavering alongside with the warm and soothing brown. The glazed silver flickered and swayed with strength, dancing to a soundless tune while the deep green flared bright with courage, wavering, but never fading.

But then that strange harmony faded too, and the red and brown bled to grey- an ugly, spotted grey with splotches of a reddish brown dotting throughout its depths.

Then even the grey swirled and changed, moving like a streamlined river into the air, out of the end of a singing golden statue.

It froze, hanging forever unchanging and cold like death, in an arch. The sound disappeared through the way, all of the noises, all of them - but the voices.

The voices still sang.

They beckoned you from the arch. You waited though, waited for the red and brown to call you back. They had before, with warm comforting voices full of _sound_ that cut through the silent ache. But there was only grey. And the ache grew. The voices called you again.

So you went.

But the ache never left. It just stayed, filling you so full of emptiness.

And now the emptiness takes the fake colors still dancing in the hollow space. It takes the arch and it takes the rubble and the pictures and the sounds once more. It takes and takes and _takes _until nothing is left. It even takes Him.

So you smile, or at least you think you do- you can't remember what 'smile' was. It sounds nice though, so you decide to keep it, locking away the tune in the empty space left over. It should fit, there's plenty of room now. Maybe you can fit some more sounds, beautiful ones that sway and flow like the Silver.

You don't know how long you play your sound, that single note in an unending tone. But you play long enough for the voices to come back, the gentle ones that beckoned you on to another world. _No pain, _they whisper. _No ache. No screaming quiet. _

The voices drown out everything else until even the hollows are gone. And when it leaves, a last song of despair crying out, you open your eyes to new stars.

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Chapter 1

…

Mary hesitated, her hand resting just inches away from the door.

She didn't want to disturb him. He looked more peaceful than she had ever seen him, in all the weeks that he'd been here. He was sitting there, his back resting against the wall and hands lying lightly in his lap. It would almost seem as if he were half asleep already, that is, if his sharp, emerald green eyes weren't focused intently, almost hungrily on the world just outside the window.

She sighed, her hand dropping away. Despite his relaxed body language, the eyes made it obvious where he'd rather be, where he'd tried, on a number of occasions, to be. They always gave him away.

"You can come in you know."

The soft voice startled her, and Mary blushed, embarrassed, but still ducked into the room clutching her clipboard to her chest. "Sorry John, you looked so tired, I didn't want to disturb you," she said quietly.

He blinked, an odd sort of looking briefly passing across his pale face, before he swung his head towards her and smiled brightly. "It's Harry." He corrected. "At least I think its Harry," he furrows his brows, as if slightly puzzled. "It sounds better than John anyways," he finally dismissed with a wry smile.

Mary gasped softly, excitement rising for the young man- Harry- in front of her. "That's great J-Harry; your memory is finally coming back!"

But Harry shook his head, a disappointed grimace on his face. "No, it's not coming back, at least not really." Mary saw his eyes flicker back out the window again. "I just passed a hot dog stand the other day, I was kind of hungry, so I stopped and I saw the name Harry on the side, 'Harry's Hotdogs'," he smiled dryly, "Ever since then, it just kind of stuck with me, couldn't get the sound of the name out of my head."

She saw the glazed, far away film creep into his eyes. Her granddad had a similar look every time he started talking about her mom again. But unlike Grandpa Max, Harry- as usual- didn't seem to be looking at something far away at all. With his head cocked slightly to the side, it looked more like he had simply given up on seeing completely, and was instead trying desperately to listen to some lost, echoing sound.

"Harry. It has a nice ring to it after all, don't you think?" He continued absently.

Mary smiled at him, the one she reserved for her brother and for this young man who reminded her so much of Greg. "Yeah, it does sound better than John, but no memories at all yet? Not even a last name to get rid of that John Doe entirely?"

The bleak and miserable look on Harry's face almost broke her heart. He seemed so young whenever this happened, even younger than his already youthful and slim appearance suggested. He tried to hide it as much as possible from her, she knew, but she still saw it every now and again when Harry thought she wasn't looking.

"No," he said quietly, "still no memory. I told you, I just thought Harry sounded nice- familiar."

Mary didn't know what to say to that. Despite everything she tried to do for her patients, she was never very good at talking with them, a quality she so desperately wished she could have. She was almost jealous of the other nurses she saw toting around and chatting happily with old men about their glory days, blushing when they tried to be charming and giggling at their jokes.

It had been no different when she first met the strange boy sitting just a few feet away from her, lost in the summer day outside.

But unlike most of the patients in the long term ward, Harry never bothered with making too much conversation. When he had been first admitted, beaten and bloody, Harry hadn't spoken a word. Mary supposed that the initial shock of waking up to a strange place, with apparently absolutely no memories of anything that happened before, had taken the voice right out of him. But for the rest of the week, Harry, admitted as one John Doe, never uttered a word.

So Mary requested to be his nurse. It seemed like the perfect match to her. She would be able finally just enjoy her job of doing everything she possibly could to help the young man without worry of conversation, and he would probably appreciate her silence as well, no constant badgering questions about a past he didn't remember.

She already knew that a few of her fellow nurses had hoped to ask him about his past, after all, what was a teenager doing in the middle of central park beaten at midnight? But when they hadn't been given the opportunity, they had badgered her. Mary, with somewhat of a guilty pleasure, had icily told the nurses off and proceeded to admonish their curiosity. It can't have been easy losing all of your memories and the last thing Harry needed was a million and one questions about it.

But when Harry saw her the next day he had told her she had a beautiful voice and asked her to use it more often, obviously overhearing her scathing remarks. He even went as far as to offer himself up as a test subject to practice conversation as long as she would talk.

"I'm sorry, Harry, for bugging you about it," she said hesitantly, "You probably don't want to be reminded."

Harry gave her a sympathizing look, "It's not a problem Mary, and you weren't being rude, don't worry." She blushed again. "It's not exactly progress, but I'm sure you just wanted to see if you could help get anything else out of it." He grinned mischievously. "Now all you need to do is tell me that's what you were doing. You're getting a lot better at talking."

Mary ducked her head, embarrassed. "Yeah, well, only because you're willing to suffer through being my test dummy."

Harry studied the shy woman standing in front of him, awkwardly shuffling her feet at his praise. Mary Bryce did have a beautiful voice. It was soft and melodic, if a little stuttering at times. She was perhaps the sweetest person he had met so far, not that he'd met many being cooped up in the hospital for going on a month. And he didn't really have anyone nice to compare her to from memory, did he?

"You probably have other patients to check on before you leave, right?" He reminded her. Mary blinked, looking at the time. Harry knew she only had three other patients left on her rotation for the day other than him. Add that to the fact that it was Saturday, and it meant she only had about thirty minutes or so before her afternoon shift was over.

"Oh, I completely forgot." She snatched the clipboard from the table and scrawled something on it quickly. "I'm sorry I didn't get to talk with you more Harry, but I really have to go." Mary frowned apologetically.

Harry nodded. He would like for her to stay too. Mary always managed to make him feel- not so lost he guessed, or alone in the hospital. It was a special quality that just hung about in the air around her, matching her voice perfectly. "Yeah, it's okay though. Have a nice Saturday."

Mary left the room, leaving him once again to stare out the window. Harry- it was an interesting sounding name wasn't it?- was sure he wouldn't be here come Monday when Mary had her morning shift. The injuries he had been rushed into this small New York hospital with had mostly healed by now. The only reasons he had stayed was for the food, which admittedly wasn't that worth it, and for his memory, which turned out just slightly less worth it than the food.

His Doctor, Dr. Halbert, had told him that in cases such as his it had most likely been a trauma to the head that caused him to forget everything. They had quickly ruled out a repression of the events that caused his injuries to be the cause of his amnesia; that would have only wiped out his short term memory.

Harry couldn't remember anything.

Not his age, his name, his birthday, or even what color his eyes had been before looking in a mirror. It had been terrifying to wake up, shivering and cold, surrounded by strangers asking him a million questions he hadn't known the answers to.

It was determined he had been mugged, viciously. He had long knife wounds covering his body, some still bleeding, and numerous bruises stretching over his skin. His wallet and driver's license, if he'd ever even had either, were missing so the police and hospital had no way of identifying him. So an extended stay in the hospital and blunt force trauma it was.

But the doctor's never found anything wrong with his head to back it up. There was no swelling, no bruising, nothing to suggest he should have any sort of memory loss. There wasn't even anything genetic.

But there was something that filled in for his memories, if only temporary. The voices. When Harry had first become aware of the people surrounding him, grabbing and touching and asking too many questions, the voices had sung in his head, like tiny melodies that whispered things to him.

But they weren't just voices. Sometimes they were the tones, when people would talk to him it was all he could do to just listen to their voice, sounding so unique to each person. And, as he soon came to realize, they matched everything about who a person was and even who they hoped to be - like Mary with her sweet song of soothing that ached to take away pain.

And then, sometimes they were melodies. These were the strangest because, apparently, Harry was the only one who could hear them. The first time he mentioned the sound of New York, its thrumming excitement, Mary had given him the strangest look. He realized then that he was the only one who could hear it. Harry was almost inclined to call himself crazy.

But the songs and the voices helped him, they took away his panic when he felt it swelling up inside, -when the doctor would ask his age, when they would ask how he got the scar on his forehead they would always start ringing in his head. He would just close his eyes and let them carry him away, ignoring the sights and feelings around him in favor of the calm they brought.

If he was honest with himself though - was he even an honest person before? - Harry would admit he was still terrified out of his mind. Where was he supposed to go, did he have any family, how was he supposed to start living with nothing to go on?

All of these questions plagued him every second of every day for the past weeks, every time he thought of leaving. He might be a completely wiped clean slate, but he couldn't legally be kept confined at the hospital. But did he really want to leave? With nowhere to go?

Harry listened out the window again, to all the noises and bird songs and the sounds of cars from the city outside. It was a wonderfully odd harmony.

Yes, he did want to leave. He'd find some way to survive out there, even with his lack of virtually anything and everything; he knew he needed to leave. The almost suffocating silence of the hospital was driving him up the wall and not even Mary's wonderful voice would hold him over for much longer.

So he stood, still dressed in the single set of cloths the hospital had issued him, and made his way out the door. Harry refused to stay any longer when nothing was happening; might as well get his first-day-of-school introduction to New York City over with.

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**A/N**: I hope the beginning wasn't too...different for you guys. xi wrote it after I got over a really hard time I've been going through, and this was just kinda how I felt. And for those of you who really want the story to start right up, well i have good news for you...Harry meets an Avenger next chapter (though, technically he doesn't, I'll leave that for you to decide).

Try and guess which one it is, and free virtual cheesecakes for anyone who gets it right! (I got really tired of making virtual cookies and brownies...) Review please!


	2. Chapter 2

**The Martyr's Morning**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Harry Potter or the Avengers.

**Thanks to: **WritingJustToWrite, Whispering Darkness,Vaughn Tyler,Far Far Away, xlunatica, Pink Bismuth, CastleZ, HuskyWalker, Raychaell Dionzeros, Pounce the Cat, Fk306, post-it-note, Anonastalker, tanis19, Noctisis Rrhagia, review-inator, Wolfking57, and distraughtmonkey for reviewing!

WritingJustToWrite: Well…erm…thanks! Glad to know I've got amazing people like you loving my story!

Whispering Darkness: Wow! It's always amazing to hear someone notice the little things in my writing, thanks so much for the comment! And congratulations, you get the cheesecake!

xlunatica: You're a mind reader or something! Or do you see the future? Anyways, Steve would be kinda obvious (as much I can see that situation happening) and I totally love Tony Stark and his entire character which why I think I put him first. But you're right, don't count SHEILD out just yet!

HuskyWalker: I would love to tell you all those answers, but I can't! They'll pop into the plot sooner or later though. And I could totally picture the same thing happening with cap too! I can tell you though that Harry is still seventeen years old.

Anonastalker: That you so much for reminding. The style of writing for the beginning was indeed inspired by "I See the Moon", but I had no idea you saw so many parallels! Sorry, let me explain a few, the colors: that was a one time, short deal and unlike in her story, my colors are only physical descriptions like Ron's hair is red, Hermione's is brown, Luna's got silver eyes, and Neville a green thumb. The voices: I will say I've had that idea for a very long time and I am expanding on them much more. They serve a purpose in the plot! Insane: My Harry is definitely not going to be as…'off' as the Moon's Harry. This chapter hopefully is where the similarities end. But thank you for pointing it out to me!

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**Chapter Two:**

…

In his own defense, Harry was naturally paranoid.

Okay, he was _really _paranoid. Everything that seemed even the slightest bit wrong would send warning bells ringing and blaring in his head like fire alarms, and man were those things loud. Heck, he had three new locks installed on his apartment door just because an odd neighbor with too many cats moved in two floors up.

Well, actually, that time probably didn't count. The ex-mall cop had robbed the local McDonalds with a stolen pistol one week later. Harry made sure to find his cats good homes; including snatching the one he named 'Dude' for himself.

So sometimes his paranoia was perfectly justified. Other times-

"Oh crud, I'm so sorry!" Harry chucked the pipe he'd grabbed off a corner trashcan to the side and rushed to the man now groaning on the floor, clutching his nose. "I am so, so sorry!" He hovered, kneeling over the man uncertainly- he didn't even know where he hit him!

"Holy Mother of-" The man rolled over to his side, still clutching his nose, blood seeping through his fingers. Well, at least Harry hadn't aimed a lot lower then. "What the hell did you do that for!?" The man pushed himself up onto his elbows, glaring murderously at Harry. In the dim glow of the streetlamp with blood running down half his neck and seemingly black eyes, the guy looked every bit of the murderer Harry thought he had been.

"You were following me for two blocks!" Harry squawked indignantly, all remorse lost at the accusing brown eyes, "I thought you were a mugger or something."

"So the first thing you decide to do is swing a brick at my face?" The man fumed. "Not, I don't know, head for the police or a bunch of people?"

"It was only a pipe," Harry defended, "and you could've jumped me before I got to the police or near any people, and where the heck would I find any large crowds this late at night anyways?"

"Maybe the club I came out of two blocks back?" The man jerked his head down the street where the faint glow of neon lights was still visible. "And dude, seriously, the face? I don't care if it was a pipe or your gram's fuzzy bunny slippers, why the hell did you have to go for the face!"

Harry actually hadn't meant to go for his face - closing his eyes right as he swung the bat around the corner - but now that the man had opened his mouth, he felt a small twinge of satisfaction that he did. "Hey, it was as much your fault as it was mine! You were following me-"

"I was going home!" The man fumed. "And here you come, swinging bricks and slippers at defenseless drunks-"

Harry stopped short of grabbing for the pipe again. "You're drunk?," he asked curiously.

The stranger groped around on the floor for a minute before grabbing something Harry hadn't seen before – a bottle of whiskey. Clutching his face again, he merely swung the bottle up towards Harry's face, nearly hitting him in the process- most likely on purpose too- and shook it.

"Of course I'm drunk. Whiskey plus beer, and little bit of vodka on the side, usually means someone's smashed."

"Huh," Harry snatched the bottle quickly away from the protesting man, "I've gotta say, you're probably the most sober drunk I've ever seen."

The man smirked. "It's a gift."

Harry scowled, "And that wasn't a compliment. What were you doing walking home drunk from a club at nearly midnight anyway? Don't you have a ride- designated driver or something?"

The guy slouched, chin resting on his chest while he attempted to get his bearings and stand- unsuccessfully at that. Maybe he wasn't such a good drunk. "Nah, let my chauffer have a holiday- wrecked his car flying into it, oh, and blasting it to bits- need'd to make it up to him."

Harry looked at him, flabbergasted. What?

He finally took pity one the guy- having nothing to do with the fact he was worried he actually knocked a few marbles loose - and gripped one of his biceps, hauling him up. "Okay buddy, what's your name? I think I should get you home," he asked with a heavy sigh.

Whatever it was that he said it certainly knocked some sort of coherency into the guy pretty quickly. "You don't know who I am?" He asked with an incredulous, and remarkably lucid, voice.

"No, am I supposed to?" Harry asked dryly. "Wait, let me guess, you're a staggering, stalking drunk named Tom?" He never liked the name Tom, it always sounded like a creeper's name.

"I'm Tony Stark," he said bluntly.

Harry blinked at him, "And that's supposed to mean what exactly?"

"Wow, just -I'm _Tony Stark."_ _Tony Stark _drew out the syllables of his name with exaggerated emphasis, obviously expecting a different reaction.

Harry frowned though, listening to the name. Tony Stark was an unusual name- well not the name itself, but just how it sounded, tied to the man half leaning on his shoulder. It had an odd sort of resonating tone, loud and brash but at the same time echoing with despondency. He hadn't heard a voice quite like it.

"It's an interesting name, I'll give you that, but I don't think we've ever met. I'm pretty sure I would remember a name like yours."

Tony leaned in suspiciously, squinting at him in the dark. "…Are you drunk?" And now Harry could definitely smell the pungent stench of alcohol on his breath.

Harry scowled, "No, I'm not drunk, but you are, ridiculously so. Now where do you live?"

Tony's still slightly skeptic eyes didn't waver, but he gestured vaguely in the direction to Harry's right. Great, that narrowed it down.

"See that really tall building?"

Okay, they were in New York. There were a lot of _really_ tall buildings. He swung one of the man's arms over his shoulder and with a dry drawl asked, "Care to narrow that down some?" Unfortunately, it wasn't hard to brace himself under the guy. Harry wasn't exactly tall.

"The really, _really_ tall one that has my name stamped on the front of it in giant, obvious letters? Not sure how much more ostentatious I can get," Tony grumbled. "Maybe that's something to look into. It's obviously not doing its job."

Harry hadn't heard a word he had said though, too busy staring at one of tallest buildings in New York that was _obviously_ compensating for something with the name Stark written across it in large white letters. It also seemed to be miles away and _in the opposite direction _of his own modest apartment.

Harry gaped. "No, absolutely no. I _refuse _to walk all the way over there-"

Tony abruptly pulled away, with more strength than Harry thought he had, shrugging his shoulders as if to simply throw of his inhibited state. "That's fine- I was planning on walking anyways." His voice took on that odd, echoed tone again. Harry, inner voices almost compelling him towards the sad tone, debated with himself.

But before Tony could even take his second step forward, in the wrong direction, he began to pitch forward, only stopped by Harry's hand snatching out to grab him.

Harry glanced back a few times, bouncing between Tony Stark, the Stark tower, and the direction of his home, before he huffed, scowling at the night sky. "I can't believe I'm doing this…" He swung Tony's arm once again over his shoulder and began lugging him along. "I don't have enough time to drop your drunken butt of at your stupidly compensating tower, you can't take two steps in any direction, and no one else is coming to pick you up. So I guess the only option is for you to stay with me tonight."

Tony snapped his head towards Harry so fast it probably caused the beginnings of his hangover to drop in a little sooner than planned. "What?" he blurted.

"You heard me; you're going to stay at my apartment tonight. But," and here Harry glared dangerously at the man, "you had better not vomit in my bathroom. The place reeks enough as it is."

Tony stared at him, silently dumbstruck or finally comatose from all the alcohol, the entire fifteen minutes to Harry's apartment.

He didn't bother switching on the lights, heading straight for his own bedroom that he kept tidy and clean as always, thank heavens. He unceremoniously dropped the man, groaning and half dead, on his bed before flicking on a lamp and scavenging in one of his cabinets for an extra blanket.

"Oh man," came a groan from the face muffled by a pillow, one eye peeking out and staring right at him, "I got dropped by a kid, a freaking kid."

Harry was too tired to snap at him - he looked at least seventeen thanks very much – and instead switched off the lamp, blanket over one arm, and left, shutting the door to the bedroom behind him on Tony's unintelligible, muffled ramblings.

Within seconds of hitting the couch, he was out cold.

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**A/N:** A bit of a shorter chapter here. For all of those people who guessed Tony Stark, ding ding ding, give them a cheesecake! I just pictured this in my head and couldn't stop laughing! Did you expect them to meet like that? I totally could see another situation with him meeting Steve, but I guess it's not meant to be. Hope you like the chapter and just let me know if you want me to continue the story.

And holy canoli! This is by FAR the best reaction I've ever gotten for one of my stories. 20 reviews, over a thousand views, 114 followers, and 40 somethin favorites!? You guys are amazing and have totally given me drive to write more!

So my infinite and undying amazement to anyone who can actually guess where the voices come from, because they are coming from somewhere!


	3. Chapter 3

**The Martyr's Morning**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any part of either of these two amazing universes.

Whispering Darkness: Holy freaking cow! I didn't realize this till just now, but you're one of my favorite authors! So it's really great to hear from you that you like my story, thanks so much!

Pink Bismuth: Well, thanks so much for your desperation for me to continue this story. And once I had this idea in my head of how they met (it kinda hit me from out of nowhere) I just couldn't stop laughing about it. It seemed to fit Tony perfectly.

Lolchen: Well, I guess it's a minor spoiler, but I will tell you that Harry is definitely not in his own world anymore, and some changes are going to happen to him because of it.

HuskyWalker: You're right, Tony's not really the type to let a mystery escape him, but he won't be going about it in the way you might think.

**Chapter Three**:

…

When Harry woke up at eight a.m. like every other day, Tony Stark was still laid out flat in his bedroom. But by the time he had taken a shower and had breakfast going, the man was dragging his feet into the kitchen, seeming to be at complete ease in a stranger's house, with the same designer jeans and rumpled ACDC t-shirt he had apparently been wearing the night before.

Harry took a moment to examine the man he was flipping very expensive, at least for him, pancakes for. He had a dark, almost black, hair and a goatee, cleanly cut. He clearly took pride in his appearance, if his clothing was anything to go by, but his actual person, not so much. The man had dark rings under his eyes, way too pressed from just one late night of partying, not matter how hard it must've been, and they were bloodshot from an over abundance of alcohol. The ugly purple-yellow shades that blossomed across his cheek didn't help any either.

Now that he had an appearance to match the voice to, Harry had to admit that they fit together perfectly – it was actually sad.

"So, how's the face doing? Your ego healed at all from being wiped by a 'kid'," Harry greeted lightly.

Tony scowled at him, warping the ripe bruise around his mouth, "Uh, one I was _drunk _so not much of an accomplishment there, and two, how exactly old are you? Fifteen - sixteen at most?" he asked, snagging the orange juice from off the counter and a cup, pouring himself a glass. "And I gotta say, love the accent. I prefer French myself though, but usually on the ladies." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively with a grin.

Harry ignored the innuendo, surly, and snatched the juice back. "I'm actually surprised you're not cowering under my bed with the curtains drawn, hissing at the sun. And I'm seventeen, actually." He wasn't much of a morning person, especially the morning after bringing a drunk stray home.

Tony looked surprised at his age. He glanced around the small apartment curiously. "So, where're the parents? Out on vacation?"

Harry shrugged, turning back to the oven to flip the rest of the pancakes onto a plate. "I don't know," he replied frankly.

Tony raised his eyebrows. "You don't know? So you're what- orphan, runaway, traveling circus kid with a monkey?" he poked, smirking.

Harry actually smiled a bit. He felt he should be defensive, but something about the way the Tony's voice sounded- it was just funny. "Nah, I just don't know. Though, it'd be great if it was the last one." He grabbed a few pills off the counter and tossed them at Stark, who caught them deftly in one hand. "Advil," Harry replied to the questioning glance. "Thought you could use some after all that alcohol last night. And really," he wrinkled his nose in disgust, "I swear I could smell four different types of booze on your breath, what the heck were you doing?"

Tony actually looked offended. "Really, only four?" he mumbled grumpily, "I drank at _least _six. First my tower, now this, I must really be losing my touch." He turned a searching gaze on Harry now, "And what was_ I_ doing? What's a seventeen year old kid doing out that late, notably and unusually _not _drunk?"

"I work late hours at a clinic," Harry answered casually, staring at Stark with curious green eyes. That voice was back, the echoing one behind the bravado. "You have a strange voice, it's all echoes," he blurted suddenly.

It was an awkward second later that Tony, with a bewildered expression, replied, "Huh?"

Harry blushed, mentally berating himself. Apparently his recently acquired filter between his brain and mouth decided to take the morning off. "Uh, nothing, never mind," he said hastily. Sometimes it was still hard to keep the voices to himself - it had been impossible when he was in the hospital. There had been nothing to do and the tones had spun themselves in his head all day long that they were always at the forefront in his mind. Even now, when he had been out of the hospital for a few weeks, it was still hard to restrain his impulses when it came to them.

Tony gave him a strange look, but moved on, an apparently much more pressing topic rearing up. "So how come you didn't know me, I mean," he smirked, "with all pride set aside, and plenty left still spilling out, even in England I'm huge. So unless you were living under a very lonely, technologically deprived rock for all of your natural life and then some, you should have known me the second you saw me." He seemed genuinely curious, asking "So why didn't you?"

Now Harry shrugged uncomfortably, fiddling with the silverware next to his plate. "The same reason I don't know where my parents are, or if I've even got any. I'm amnesiac."

The man paused, incredulous and probably waiting for the punch line. "Well that's definitely not the most original excuse I've heard." He finally replied. Then Tony perked up in interest, and Harry felt any of the partiality he'd developed for the man go 'poof'. "But really, amnesia? So you don't remember anything, at all?"

Stabbing at a pancake a bit too violently, Harry shrugged. "That's pretty much the definition of amnesia. Now, if you're not going to eat those pancakes, don't you have somewhere to be?" He did _not _like the direction this conversation was going, and he made the fact obvious with the blatantly abrupt subject change_. _ "Last time I checked, people with names plastered all over a building usually _owned _them." He pointed his fork and stared at Stark shrewdly. "Don't you have a business or something to run?"

Stark waved him off affably with an easy grin, "Nah, I'm only in my New York district for a few days- was supposed to be checking out on some tweaks to my expo. That is," here he gave a smug smirk, eyes glinting mischievously, "before I got kicked out of my own meeting. You'd think your own company would deal with a few suggestions here and there." He shrugged, "But you didn't answer my question. How's a kid with no memory end up south side of New York? Besides that, how'd you even escape the foster care system if you're only seventeen?"He grabbed a pancake, tearing off a chunk of it one large bite staring at him curiously, as if he were mentally dissecting him. It was actually sort of creepy. "You could've fudged a year and avoided all the trouble in one astonishing, miracle memory flash."

Harry shoved the plate of pancakes away from Stark as he made a grab for another, nearly growling. "I got listed as an independent ward of the state. I got a job. I got a crummy apartment in the south side of New York. And apparently, I got a thing for taking in any strange old drunks that like to pry in my private life."

"Well," Stark leaned back casually in his chair, smirking. "I'm not just any drunk and I don't think you have much of a private life to pry into with the little issue of _having_ no life, literately." The smirk was now a full blown grin, sly and leery. "Now _my _private life – now _that's_ a story." Briefly, he wondered if the man had somehow found a previously unknown stash of alcohol in his bedroom last night, or with Stark's personality, maybe even this morning.

"I'm sure it does," Harry drawled, "Now what are you still doing here? As I said before, don't you have an international business or something to run?"

Tony, an imperiously self-absorbed glow surfacing, leaned forward, "Aha, so you do know who I am?"

"Nope," Harry felt a twinge of satisfaction at Stark's disgruntled frown, "I don't even have internet to Google you with, let alone remember you from some obscure, lost piece of memory. I'm just pretty sure from the size of your building, that you must do something pretty lucrative."

The self-inflated look was back. "So that tower _is_ useful for something," he proudly exclaimed. "And you _still _haven't answered my questions. You're a bit of a slippery one, anyone ever told you that Houdini?"

"Not that I can really _remember_, no," Harry deadpanned_. _His random spring of patience for the man that had surfaced over night was now experiencing a drought, a very long, hot, and annoyed drought. He hadn't exactly known what to do with the man in the 'morning-after', but he had at least expected Stark's personality to be more subdued with the lack of alcohol in his system. It seemed the alcohol had actually made it more bearable; maybe because he could push it off on being drunk?

Stark was lounging comfortably in his chair now, grinning at Harry with a reckless smile, as if he couldn't understand why this kid was letting him in his house either. He snorted mentally; at least they were on some sort of same page. Pushing away from the table, Harry stood. _"_Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to be late for work and I'd appreciate not having a-" Harry almost gasped out loud and tried to school his expression quickly, "- a complete stranger in my house while I'm gone."

The voices were back, the _other _ones.

"So," Tony drawled, standing up slowly, "I guess that's a rain check on the day-after party then?" At Harry's determinedly blasé expression, Tony snatched and practically inhaled one last dry pancake, hands held out in the universal sign of pleading. "Fine, fine – a guy can take a hint, but here," he flipped out a card from somewhere, handing it to Harry. "That's my number. Call me if you need any help with your soul searching," he winked, "I'm a great detective."

As the man stepped just a foot towards the door, it took everything Harry had to keep his straight face and watch him go. The voices were telling him, no begging him, to follow. And as Harry stepped forward - he stepped forwards right past Tony Stark.

And he held the door open.

He wasn't sure why, but he held it open, watching the man as he strode down the street, whistling a careless tune that was both fueled by his own carefree voice and weighted down by the echo. Even when he was out of sight, Harry still stood listlessly in the doorway.

He had ignored the voices. For the first time since he had woken up, he had ignored the soft voices in his head that had led him to everything he had now. Their music had drawn him to this apartment. They even led him to the small out of the way clinic he now worked at.

And just now, as he opened the door for Tony Stark to leave, they had pulled him forward, pulled him toward the stranger in his doorway. The voices had risen up, a harmony of change telling him to ask the man to stay. To stay or follow, really, it didn't matter.

But at the same time, while the voices were ringing, something else was moving him, telling him to do otherwise. It had never happened before and it didn't even speak to him, but it reached down through him, further buried than even the voices, _don't follow – don't go after him. Not yet._

So Harry didn't

He watched, listening to the voices faded away, as random stranger walk out of his life like any other. And for some reason…

For some reason it felt wrong.

…

**A/N**: Okay, so apparently the lines aren't working on the site right now, go figure. And have no fear! No one gets rid of Tony Stark that easily, and he'll be showing up again sooner or later in true Tony Stark fashion! In most of the stories I read, Tony just sticks around bugging the 'mystery person' until they finally crack. With Harry and Tony, I picture something a bit different.

And some of those guesses on the 'voices' were really good, guys!..._buuut _I haven't seen anyone guess it right yet, so I guess it'll be a good guessing game till it comes out! A lot of people though along the lines of Master of Death, but I've seen a lot of those and I want to do something I haven't seen yet, so keep trying!

Thanks again to everyone who reviewed! You all are amazing and I got an even better reaction from my last chapter, it makes me happy to know people like reading what I've got!


	4. Chapter 4

**The Martyr's Morning**

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or the Avengers

SylphJr: Congratulations! You have officially come the closest to guessing the source of the voices! If you can narrow it down and just PM me the answer, I'll….do something to reward you for it! Not sure what, but something!

Whispering Darkness: Thanks, I was worried I wouldn't be able to do very good interaction between the two, but once I started writing it just kind of flowed. Tony is a surprisingly easy character to write with Harry.

Adelaide 'Adell' Peirce: Haha…nargles…good guess, but no.

Lolchen: You're the only one to comment on the 'other' instinct, great job! Now another guessing game begins! What's that 'other' instinct? O.o And thanks for the comment on the minor OC. I really enjoy writing those small, foundational roles and it makes me pretty happy to have someone point them out, thanks!

The elusive shadow: Well, there's a reason Tony seems a bit more…grumpy than usual, and it'll pop up pretty soon here. I tried to make it to where he wasn't so 'cruel' as you put, just a bit more snappy than usual. Just wait a bit and you'll see the reason why!

* * *

**Chapter Four:**

…

Red…or green.

Harry rested his head on the table, scowling as the light filtered through the two colors, reflecting in a bewitching array of crimson and viridian tones. Sometimes the light would hit a pocket of air and bloom into a shower of multicolor, but with a hint more undertone of either red or green depending.

Both colors looked equally appealing - red always seemed to be a nice welcoming color, but then again there was just something about the green. He was torn, he had to choose one; red or green. Harry flicked one of the forms in front of him lightly, watching it jiggle back and forth cursed his indecision.

It should not be this hard to choose a plate of jell-o.

"I'm having a debate over the bloody jell-o color," he groaned derisively, shoving his head into the cushion of his arms. "This is absolutely ridiculous."

And it was ridiculous – ludicrously so. It was lunch, they were serving jell-o in the clinic cafeteria, Harry had spotted the plates of dessert and had reached out absently to grab one only to freeze in place, staring conflicted at the two options.

That had been at least ten minutes ago. He couldn't even tell why it was so hard to just grab one and go; it was like there was some barrier between him and his jell-o, the universe conspiring to destroy his lunch time.

He supposed that his (required) psychologist, whom he made an effort to avoid at all costs, would say that his indecisiveness in choosing something as simple as the color of his jell-o stemmed from the lack of an apparent identity at this point. It was the beginning struggle to make the choices, as small as they might seem, that would rebuild his self image once more.

That or it was the attempt of his subconscious mind to dredge up even the smallest defining feature of who he was, what he liked - his choices. It was a coping method for his prolonged amnesia.

It was absurd is what it was. It was Jell-o for crying out loud!

Harry grudgingly admitted to himself though, idly wiggling the red desert, that this was not the first time he had been caught up for more than a few minutes arguing with himself over something so insignificant. Just the other day he had tried to buy a soda at a fast food place to get through a long work night, only to stand there frowning at the menu for close to fifteen minutes. It was only when the girl chewing the obnoxiously large wad of gum threatened to throw him out did he ask for water.

He didn't even want to think about the grocery store trip.

Shuffling from the front room brought Harry's attention back to the present as he flicked his gaze upwards to the clock hanging just above his table. It was almost one o'clock. Grimacing, he shoved his entire lunch away, red and green jell-o included. There went his appetite.

"Harry, dear," a soft voice called from behind him, and Harry twisted to face the doorway. "Aren't you going to eat something?"

Harry smiled at the old lady there. "Not feeling very hungry today Mrs. Finks." The woman frowned at him though, and a now familiar sense of foreboding crept into Harry's stomach at the stern, disapproving brown eyes now fixed solely on him.

"That is the third day in a row you've eaten nothing Harry. I can't have you working up front at the desk if you can't take care of yourself," she threatened lightly, but Harry knew she didn't mean it. Mrs. Finks had recounted the exact same threat on several occasions when he had first started working at her clinic two weeks ago. Her whole face softened for a moment. "You were doing so well for a few days, what happened?"

Harry shrugged casually, but twiddled his fingers nervously at the enquiry. Against his will he felt the corner's of his mouth twitch at the action. Apparently, he had a habit of doing that he'd been told. But looking over at the doorway with Finks distressed frown cowed the smile from his face fast.

Beatrice Finks, a widowed old woman of sixty, had taken it upon herself to become Harry's personal nanny ever since he'd applied for the secretarial spot at the front desk of the small family business. Despite her frail appearance, she was fierce and stern in her self-appointed calling.

It was really no surprise to Harry, her voice had been an unwavering melody; soothing in its tones with soft lilts, similar to Mary's actually, but steadfast and unwavering in its beats. A determination shone through in her voice above all else, and though it was beautiful, it could also be very intimidating.

Mrs. Finks had even going as far as to supply Harry with one of grandson's old phones so he could have an emergency contact, checking up on him at least once every other day.

And that consistent monitoring had inevitably bled over into his personal diet - or lack thereof apparently.

"I don't know," Harry replied, shrugging as he sat upright, "Just haven't been all that hungry lately." Judging by the woman's skeptical expression, she didn't believe the excuse any more than Harry did himself.

He knew exactly when he had stopped eating.

It was the day after he had forced Tony Stark out of his home, and that was a week ago. Seven days with minimal food forced down his throat. Harry didn't exactly understand why that was; it didn't make much sense for one stranger's random appearance to have any profound affect after all, so he kept it to himself. But the fact that it had affected his eating was unquestionable.

He dutifully ignored the light echo in the back of the mind that dredged up the memory of the absence of the voices.

Mrs. Finks sighed, but didn't push the issue. "Well, I'll get you a container then. You should at least take some of that with you," she nodded at the tray with sinking mashed potatoes and dry meat, "You might get hungry while you're waiting."

Harry stared after her retreating form blankly, "Waiting? For what?"

"Didn't you schedule to meet with the police about your case today?" she called out from the hallway.

Understanding dawned slowly. Oh. Right. The police meeting - that was today wasn't it? Though Harry wasn't exactly thrilled to go meet them; he wasn't sure they'd be any more helpful over the phone than in person. In fact, from his limited experience with New Yorkers, he figured they might actually be quite worse.

At least once a week, from the time he'd checked himself out, he'd met with or spoken with the NYPD on three different occasions, six if the times in the hospital were included. None of them were particularly pleasant either.

The first time he'd spoken with them outside his confinement, was when they had called the landline of his newly acquired apartment to ask him a few more questions about his case, what he could remember. Harry could maybe excuse their rude behavior that time; it probably wasn't easy interrogating an amnesiac.

The other two times were just as unpleasant though. Those times, Harry had been the one calling to enquire about the police's findings. Had anyone been looking for him? Had they found a driver's license? Had they done anything?

They hadn't if the flat line on the other end of his phone was anything to go by.

Groaning again, Harry let his head fall onto the table with a dull thud, not even wincing at the impact. "I completely forgot about that." He cast a pained grimace towards the jell-o, wiggling innocent by the tray. "And I had been having such a good day too," he muttered dryly.

"Oh don't be like that," Mrs. Finks admonished him, hustling into the room with a white paper container. "You want to find out what happened, don't you?" She smiled, seeming to be impossibly mischievously innocent at his sour expression, "And if that isn't enough encouragement, I've already given you the afternoon off, so you might as well go." Harry scowled.

Curse women logic.

"Fine, I'll go," he grumbled standing, "but I'm not going to be happy about it."

Mrs. Finks replied sweetly with a fond, exasperated smile, "Goodness my dear, I wouldn't expect you to be happy about anything, now would I, much less about talking to the police. I don't even know why I have to convince you though; you're the one you set up the appointment."

So with a quick package job, and a goodbye hug, Harry was promptly thrown out of the Hendrickson Clinic.

Harry took a moment, just standing on the sidewalk, to still and enjoy the warmth of the fresh summer day with only the sounds of traffic and the occasional bird as a background.

The clinic was in an out of the way street, not near enough to the heart of New York for many cars to be passing by on a regular basis. Oh, the street was still plenty busy with cars constantly parked up and down the road, but a peace was able to settle down over the area, none of the chaos penetrating the small bubble of tranquility.

And as Harry set off towards the NYPD, he remembered exactly why he had chosen place a spot to work at, besides the great food it offered.

When he had first heard New York, he had commented to Mary that its music was thrumming with excitement, a constant upbeat note. And from the safety and confines of his little closed off room, it was.

Stepping outside was a whole other story.

Cringing at the blaring car horn right next to him, and the spewing swear words that followed it, Harry half wished he had let Mrs. Finks give him her son's old music player to go along with the phone. The noise was overwhelming.

It was chaotic and loud, constantly blaring in his ears. He could hear so many different voices, each yelling their own story to him, vying for his absolute attention and it was too much. The noises pressed in on him and the odd harmony was no longer music, but a horrible collection of screeching cats singing off-key.

And no matter how many times he had dared to venture into the heart of the city, everything seemed to want him to listen to it. Even the bald cab driver now storming up to him, purple in the face and fuming.

"Hey, you kid!" Harry's head swiveled from side to side, praying 'Hey, you kid' was any kid but him.

Apparently not.

The man had reached him, looking about ready to foam at the mouth. "What do you think you're doing, huh? Get off my car!"

"Oh – uh, I'm really sorry," Harry stammered, quickly jumping up from what was definitely _not _the park bench he had thought it was. "I didn't realize-" Didn't realize what? That he had been lounging on a very bright, unmistakably yellow cab car? Yeah, that wasn't going to fly.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" the man got grabby, yanking Harry away from the small car by his arm. "I don't need another snot-nosed kid vandalizing my car for the second time in one week. I had to pay out of my own check to get the crap off last time!

Harry screwed his eyes shut, wincing at the bruising grip. And for the first time since he had shut his door on Tony Stark the voices came back. They rose quickly, a calming melody washing over him, but the pressure steadily rising in the back of his head did not lessen, instead it seemed to build.

"Hey, are you listening kid?" No, he was _really_ trying not to, "Did you hear me? Scram, before I call the cops." And then the bruising grip was gone and Harry's eye flew open as he was sent stumbling away from the angry cabbie, a gasp escaping as the pressure suddenly disappeared, leaving so quickly he felt dizzy. In its place was a pounding headache.

The man turned to leave, still muttering under his breath. Harry quickly recovered, "Wait," he called after him, "hold up, I need a ride."

The cabbie, amazingly enough, stopped and turned back, looking at Harry incredulously. "I needed a ride," Harry explained quickly, "That's why I was sitting on your cab; I was waiting for you to come back." Setting aside the particulars of his explanation, like the fact it was a complete lie, a ride to the police station would be a lot quicker than walking and New York cabs were notoriously hard to wave down.

The man didn't seem convinced, but Harry was a customer willing to pay, no good delinquent or not. "Fine," he ground out. "Get in."

Harry breathed a sigh of relief and quickly hopped in the back seat, sinking back wearily. "To the police station, please."

What he got in return was a derisive snort at the irony and a revved engine. The cabbie apparently didn't have much of an issue with dropping off a would-be law breaker at the police.

And within minutes Harry was standing in front of a desk at the NYPD waiting for the officer to come back with his file, looking on as criminal after criminal was hauled through the swinging front doors. Whatever welcome he had been expecting to receive, what he was slammed head first with was not it. He had to clutch to the old worn oak desk, he felt so sick.

The voices in this building were disgusting.

They were repulsive, the songs throbbing with off-key notes, double toned depths lying offset against one another, clashing horribly like nails on a chalkboard. It was the worst thing he'd ever heard and it took every ounce of self control not to claw his own ears off.

It shouldn't have been surprising and he should have thought about it before he stepped a foot into the building. Voices matched the people using them perfectly, and criminals were no exception.

They just sounded revolting.

What was worse was that they were everywhere around him, their sick tunes calling out for his attention like any other song. If there was maybe only one voice, he could handle it; but this many-

"Hey, are you okay," he jumped violently, looking wildly over his shoulder at the startled young officer that had touched him there lightly. The young man looked at him concerned, "You don't look so good. Maybe you should sit down or something."

"Yeah," Harry croaked weakly, "Um – I'm just gonna sit down. Can I just-" he gestured to the officer's chair he was waiting for and the young man quickly jerked it around the desk for him. Harry sat down heavily, glancing once more at the man hovering over him. He cleared his voice, "Could you, I guess, just-" _keep talking? _He didn't quite know how to reach down and jerk the words out of his throat though. The officer's voice was soothing and quiet, a balm on the pressure that was resurfacing as a dull tumor in the back of his head.

"Just what?"

"Could you keep talk-"

Both of them jumped this time as the front door was thrown open violently. The man – _George_ the man's voice seemed to say, which was new - sprung to his feet and dashed across the room to aid his fellow officer grappling with a large thrashing man.

"NO! I'M INNOCENT! I DIN' DO NOTHIN'!"

Harry cringed, threading his finger through his hair and gripping it tightly, as if he could hold the throbbing pressure at bay. The man was a criminal. His voice was anything but innocent, polluted and double-toned with violent harmonic collisions.

"I DIN' KILL HER!" With tattoos spiraling up his arm and several piercings dotting his face, the man's appearance did nothing to dissuade the accusations against him. His voice was perhaps even more incriminating than his looks.

Harry's head, cradled in his hands, snapped up as at a giant roar of anger that reverberated off the walls. One large, beefy arm swung free, throwing away the young officer that had rushed over to help. That same arm, in a flash, dug deeper into the inside of his waistband only to jerk out fast, a gun flashing into his hand aimed right at the head of the wide-eyed George.

The shot exploded in a muted silence.

And the large man, a blank film creeping into his eyes, collapsed forward, blood staining his shirt crimson. Just to the right, an older officer's gun was smoking on the end. The thin stillness returned along with a heavy blanket of tension.

No one moved. No one spoke. No one even breathed. It was as if they were caught in some twisted still frame, frozen in that moment. In that space between seconds that bled over in another, feeling as if it lasted hours. But it was only a second. And that second was broken by a low, livid hiss.

"Who the _ #!*% _ let a suspect walk into this building with a _ #!*% _ _firearm?" _

Detective Kiers, Harry's file scattered on the floor around his feet stood, red faced and gun in hand, at the back room doorway fuming at the officers still unmoving around the room.

"_Who!"_ He roared, spittle flying.

A shaky hand went up from an officer that seemed as young as George. Kiers jerked his head violently towards the back room. "Get into my office. Now," he hissed through clenched teeth. "And Vern," he nodded to the man with the smoking gun, face settling into a stony expression torn with indecision, "I'll need to see you later as well," pausing a moment later, "Good job."

Vern barely seemed to hear him, hardly managing a shaky dip of his head in return.

And Harry was sure he knew why that man was just as uncertain and trembling as much as he was himself. That moment before the criminal had laid a finger on the trigger and right as Vern raised his gun, that space in between seconds, Harry felt the pressure in his head pop, almost like a balloon filled with a bit too much air. And in the same exact moment, the shot was fired.

Vern's finger had been nowhere near the trigger.

Harry, trying his best to stem the nausea he felt at the body lying lifeless on the ground – _the fact that it was lifeless because of him was, for some reason, only responsible for the hollow feeling in his chest, not the nausea - _glanced back once at his scattered files on the floor then to meet Detective Kiers startled glance, before turning and bolting out of the police station.

From now on, phone calls it was.

* * *

**A/N:** So I figured I'd give you guys a Thanksgiving treat in the form of a double chapter week! That and I couldn't wait to get this chapter posted, it's one of the ones I wrote very early on. And Someone has come _very _close to guessing the voices, close but not exact. And the reappearance of Harry's magic! A few thing are going to be different about it though, but that doesn't come till later on.

And holy guacamole! I almost have 100 reviews! I've never got that close before and I'm so thankful that ya'll like my story enough to comment on it. Please continue and help me get to the big triple digits this chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

**The Morning's Martyr**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own the Avengers or Harry Potter.

Lolchan: Haha, glad you caught the Slytherin/Gryffindor thing in there, and don't worry, I left it hanging on purpose! And again, with the job thing, don't worry! You were actually the only one that caught how easy he was able to nab one. There's going to be an explanation for all that later! See what else you can find that seemed a bit too easy ;)

VLight: Wow…you're really gonna make me wait? Oh well, haha, I guess that's just your insurance, huh?

SylphJr: Glad you enjoyed the jell-o! I wanted it to be something seemingly mysterious in the beginning, this great struggle over something life changing!...only for it to be jell-o! I don't actually know where the idea came from anyways… I love it when people like how I do my OCs, it makes my day! And the detective…well, I actually went back and fixed that, cause you made a really good point about how odd his expression seemed, thanks! And thanks for the support too. And the 'other' voice…well it isn't exactly as malevolent as everyone is seeming to think, I'll just say that.

Lady Dreamcatcher: Wow…just wow! I'm so glad my story itches!...kind of. Thanks so much for the review! I must admit, you do your homework far much better than I do mine haha. And the Deathly Hollows idea, I _might _be taking just a smidgen from it, but it's not the reason he hears the voices. And this chapter should answer any questions you guys have about when this takes place too. For the rest of your theories…I can't really answer them yet! I love long reviews btw! And I'm not sure if I'll go back to that detective…hmm…

**Chapter Five:**

…

Harry didn't return to work after that. He hadn't even returned to his empty apartment – _not a home yet, not ever a home – _instead choosing to wander. For the rest of the day, and stretching into the late hours of the night, he walked and walked, with no apparent destination in mind; just the thought of listening to the once again happy thrum of New York.

Eventually though, as if by some divine prank, he found himself staring at the same spot where'd he opened his eyes, frightened and scared, to his new, empty life; in the center of Central Park. So he found a hobo-less bench and sat there, listening to the birds' songs and the tinkling laughter of children.

Sooner rather than later the sun set, the light rushing by as faster than he could think – _What was that? What even happened? How did it happen? – _and the police trickled in to ward off the homeless. And with a heavy sigh, Harry stood and made the trek back to his apartment by the dim moonlight and bright neon signs.

And then it was the second time Harry met Tony Stark. The circumstances weren't much better either; the man was passed out drunk (again) and splayed out half-naked across his bed.

It was safe to say that collapsing on his bed after an emotionally, and oddly physically, exhausting day only to find someone already occupying it did not make Harry happy. At all.

With his eyes shut, Harry had fallen backwards onto his bed, expecting the loud spring mattress to squeak its gloriously uncomfortable welcome. That didn't exactly happen.

Harry yelped, jumping up and scrambling to light when something squishy, and decidedly _not _his pillow, groaned heavily beneath him. "What the-" he flipped it on, "Mr. Stark!?"

Tony Stark, laying face down and still groaning, turned his head to blink owlishly at Harry standing next to the light switch as he attempted to push himself upright on the bed. Good lord, this was just like the first time, only now, a few key pieces were missing.

Like the man's shirt.

And that observation led to a whole new level of panic.

Briefly ignoring the explanations that could possibly clarify why the man would be half dressed in his apartment, Harry darted over to him, staring at the glowing blue light in his chest with a sort of sick fascination. It seemed to just sink into his chest, a ring of metal surrounding it. "What the heck is wrong with your ches-"

Tony's bleary eyed look vanished and his gaze snapped down, looking terrified at what he might find, only to relax as soon as the blue light washed over his face. _What? _Slowly, he turned once more to look at Harry, still staring with bewildered green eyes, and gave him a lopsided grin, eyes droopy and glazed over. "Hey kid! Nice 'f you to join the par'y."

He blinked at his surroundings now, from the tangled mess of the bed underneath him, to the Harry's silhouette against the plain brown backdrop of the wall. He squinted in the light, confusion twisting his face into a heavy frown. "Where'd it go?"

"Mr. Stark-" Tony cringed slightly, but still continued to grope around on the bed for _something, _"I'm pretty sure it is _not _natural to have a personal flashlight installed in your chest," Harry tried to make his tone as light as possible but he couldn't shake of the slight tremor to it. "And even if that's supposed to be there, I'm pretty sure those black lines aren't."

And it was true. Listening closely, Harry could hear the whirring of the blue machine in the man's chest. It sounded completely natural, creating a part of Tony Stark's song actually, now that he really took note.

But those black lines looked sick.

It wasn't that he could hear them, he couldn't hear everything after all, but they didn't look as if the even remotely belonged with the soft blue light. They stretched out only a little ways from the center of Stark's chest, maybe a good couple of inches, but the skin they touched looked pale and transparent, blue veins standing out starkly against the white. He'd seen the same skin color on the sicker patients that had come through the clinic. Those were the ones they usually had to transfer to the hospital.

So Harry, with all the medical knowledge of a secretary working part-time in a clinic, reacted the only way he knew how. "You've got to go to the hospital!" He rushed towards the landline phone next to his bed, all pretense of calm abandoned. "You've got to get help-"

But Stark was faster, diving so suddenly with a feral burst of energy for the same phone that Harry flinched back from the abrupt and wild lunge. "No!" Tony snatched the entire set off of the night stand, wrenching it violently from the wall only to toss it to the other side of the room. "No-no, I'm… fine. I'm completely fine," his hands shook fiercely as he brought them up to cover his sweat covered brow., words no longer slurred, but shaky "It's supposed to look like that. It- that means its working…its working," he choked out, breathing ragged and shallow.

Harry didn't reply, instead merely raised his hands in placation and slowly made his way towards the wheezing man, "Okay, I'm not going to call the hospital. I'm not going to do anything now that my phone is completely trashed on the floor."

The man bent over on the side of his bed, still half falling from his lunge, did not react in the slightest, and not even the barest twitch of comprehension at Harry's acquiescence.

Stark looked as hollow and toneless as his voice sounded, all broken echoes and desperate beats. At first glance he seemed to be every bit the charismatic drunk he had been just the last week, but now he fit the image of a dying man in denial. Harry could still even here the muttered 'its' working' under his breath, sounding to be more of a prayer than anything.

It didn't seem to be doing much of any good.

The uncharacteristic silence that filled the room, broken only ever so slightly by the glowing _thing _in Stark's chest, unnerved him. "Do you want some water," Harry asked hesitantly.

Stark's head snapped up, eyes wide as if he'd completely forgotten Harry were there, that he was in his house_. _Groping once again along the sheets of the bed, Stark didn't reply. With a grunt of frustration after a minute of searching, he snapped quite clearly, "Alcohol; bear, vodka, wine, medicine– _anything _with alcohol it."

So that's what he was looking for. His bottle of whatever it was he'd been drinking that he no doubt lost in his haze. Harry snorted, "No, I'm pretty sure I offered water. Besides I'm a minor, I can't buy beer. And even beyond that, I don't think your liver can handle much more."

Tony fixed him with a steely glare, no waver in his voice as he replied coolly, "I've had worse." And Harry believed him. The conviction was there, ringing in his voice.

But Harry didn't budge. "Water, and that's it. My house, my rules - billionaire or not."

The first phantom of a smile twitched on the edges of Stark's mouth and he jumped at the opening for a change in topic, his voice still shaky and _hurt_. "So you finally 'Googled' me then? Knew you couldn't resist."

"I Binged you, actually." In reality, Harry had done neither. For some reason or another, technology didn't really agree with him, and the feeling was mutual. Even when faced with the so-called 'dinosaur' phone he'd been provided with, Harry found himself stumped with the smallest of tasks. He'd taken one look at the sleek laptop Mrs. Finks offered and promptly refused, politely of course. The old lady had still been kind enough to look up the stranger in front of him when he'd asked though.

He'd read the first sentence and blanched. Had Harry _honestly_ _just_ housed a ridiculously wealthy (though he could've guessed) drunk genius in his home?

His musing was cut short when the man snorted, grinning wryly. "Well that's a new one, don' think I've ever been 'Binged' before." With a slight slur to his words, Stark still refused to meet Harry's piercing and curious gaze, but neither did he shift away uncomfortably. He still sat rigid, and even strong, in the face of his trembling hands and clenching jaw, strong against what seemed to be a disease growing right inside of him.

Harry felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him. This scene, this determination seemed almost…_familiar_. Almost like – Harry ground his teeth as the feeling vanished, leaving nothing more than an imprint in his chest. He was so _sure_ that he had almost found something if he'd dug just a bit further into…into what?

Stark, even through his fog, had apparently noticed Harry's rising frustration, an odd look passing briefly over his face. "Hey, what-"

Harry ignored him, barely managing a mumbled 'be right back' before throwing open the bedroom door and striding quickly towards the kitchen.

What had that been? For weeks he'd felt nothing, absolutely _nothing_ surface from his past, no hints, miraculous flashes of scenes, no _inkling_ that he'd even had one to begin with.

And despite logical thinking, Harry was angry, _seething _inside. Maybe he should feel grateful to the stranger in the other room for sparking something inside his screwed up head, but all he could feel was bitter frustration. He'd tried everything, searched everywhere possible, and all of a sudden, _magically_, it might be right here?

_What had that feeling been? _When the hollow, echo of a memory (?) had risen, the voices rose with it. They hadn't stopped their singing since he had entered his apartment actually, but just then they hadn't been singing. It sounded more like they were beating war-drums and they did nothing to quell Harry's anger.

But, as he leaned against his small kitchen counter staring blankly at the empty space in front of him, Harry knew he couldn't shove the man, no matter how annoyed he felt with him at the moment, out his front door again. It went beyond the fact that the voices seemed to revolt at the very thought of it (although that did make him a little queasy), but more because, unlike like last time, this was no joking drunk-night-out-lets-crash-in-a-strange-teenager's-place.

Tony Stark was dying.

That man in the other room was dying. Harry wasn't sure how he knew, but he was sure that was what those black lines were; a disease. And judging by the state Stark was in, and the slight wheezing Harry could still hear drifting out of his room, the older man had just discovered the same.

So with a heavy sigh, Harry quickly filled a random glass with cold water, and trudged back into the room.

Stark was in the same position Harry had left him, if slightly more composed and controlled. His hands were no longer shaking uncontrollably, though they did waver now and then, and his spine had lost just the smallest bit of stress. His jaw was still taught with tension, a firmly clenched line.

But finally looking at the man bathed in the lamp light, without shock to distract him, Harry realized what an awful state he seemed to be in. The dark rings around his eyes, what had appeared to be bad before, were now pools of black ink staining the bags drooping down. And though his chest just right around the blue light was the palest and most diseased looking, Stark's entire face was linen, a sheen of sweat covering it.

Stark certainly looked the part of death.

"Are you done?" the man asked dryly. Harry started out of his musings, shooting Stark a glare before quickly handing over the glass of water. "Great," Tony muttered, "I hoped you were actually kidding about not getting me beer. Guess not."

Harry scrutinized the man sitting before him, glowering slightly. The voices could screech all they wanted, but that didn't mean he had to like the guy's attitude. "You do realize I have a life outside of cleaning up after you, right? And hey," he threw his hands up in the air dramatically, "I don't even know you - and _you_, you don't know me either! I haven't even told you my name."

Tony didn't spare him a glance, "Listed officially as Harry Patterson. Found just over two months ago in the middle of central park with several lacerations, broken bones, and numerous bruises with developed amnesia, theorized to be a rare case of fugue state. No missing persons report on a kid of your description and no leads on your case; determined as seventeen years old and currently working at a small, family run clinic and living alone in a small, cheap apartment."

He eyed the glass in his hands distastefully, swirling its contents before downing it in one go, finally looking up to stare soberly into Harry's eyes, "So you tell me – I'd like to think I know you pretty well; at least well enough to know that no one is looking for you."

Not a muscle twitched, not a single puff of air betrayed the sharp pain that stabbed through his chest at the truth Harry had been trying his hardest to bury away in some dark, dank hole. With a dry humor that was nowhere near the sheer hopelessness that drowned him, Harry bit back, "So I was right the first time I met you. You _are_ a stalker after all." It didn't come out nearly as well as he'd hoped, his own voice cracking down the middle.

That statement was a slap in the face and it twisted viciously in Harry's stomach like a thrashing snake.

Stark gave no signs of sympathy, not even in his voice. "No, I'm just a curious guy with unparalleled genius at my beck and call. Plus, I like a good mystery, and a teenager with no memory housing a strange drunk he apparently doesn't know for a night – yeah, there was no way I'd miss that one."

Fury burned in Harry, "If I'd wanted your sticky fingers in my case I would've called you, not that I'd even _thought_ of it. And breaking into police files like that is probably against the law too."

Tony scoffed, clunking down the water on the bedside table where the phone had previously been, "Like I care about some privacy law."

"I suppose you wouldn't, what with the whole dying thing going on," Harry shot scathingly in retaliation. To his immense satisfaction he saw the man freeze, muscles almost audibly snapping together and a steely shine reflect in his eyes.

The silence stretched for minutes, each empty beat pounding in Harry's chest. But he refused to feel guilty about his statement; the man had it coming. And he had been avoiding it out of respect for the man's privacy, up till now that is. It didn't seem the guy cared for it much after all.

Finally, Stark allowed a warped, grim smile to play at his lips, his haunted eyes looking up towards Harry, "So no cares about you and I'm dying – looks like we're even." The statement was firm, his voice like stone with all of his harmonies bleeding into one endlessly flat tone. "How'd you know?"There was just the tiniest hitch at the end and Harry doubted that even Stark was aware of how translucent it made him.

A tiny bit of that barrier cracked, and a small sprinkling of guilt trickled through, not much, but enough. Harry rubbed his forehead wearily, a headache already beginning to form. Suddenly he felt tired, just too tired to deal with this. "I just took a wild stab at it, guess I got it right. That and I work in a clinic, I've seen a person come in with a life threatening condition, hoping our out-of-the-way place would have some magical remedy." He eyed Stark with a knowing look, "And I've seen what those kinds of people are like when we have to tell them we can't do anything."

It was a half truth - Harry just wasn't sure how well the man would take the 'voices' card.

Stark's entire face narrowed, a dark gleam shinning while he scoffed, "And I know what it looks like when a person knows when no one's looking for them."

And that was when Harry felt the thin string of patience snap, the tiny shred of guilt swept away along with it. "How would you know," he asked heatedly, "How in the world could you know _anything _about my case, whether or not someone's even looking for me? You shouldn't even care- why would you possibly go through all the trouble it must have taken to get information on some kid who gave you housing for one night? You can't possibly know _anything about that_."

"I told you, I'm a board, genius, billionaire with not enough time left to squander. I'm an expert at squandering; it's sort of a hobby actually." The words were shallow and weak, even without special insight. And with his voice, it gave away so much more. But the sharp spike of anger that hit Harry had ignited a fire, and he was dead set on stroking the flames.

"No, that's not it. You knew you were dying, even before you met me, you just didn't know it couldn't be stopped yet. I was just a passing distraction to put it off. You couldn't stand to think about your disease, sickness, whatever it is, but there wasn't enough about me to distract you for long," he said with a deficient grimace. It was ironic, really, that a man looking for a diversion found just the opposite; a blank canvas that forced him to face his worst fear. "And I'm guessing tonight is when you found out, huh?"

Stark didn't reply for the longest time, dazed and seeming to focus on just stopping his hands from shaking so hard, as if that action took all the strength and concentration he had. He heaved a rattling sigh, breathy and winded, "Well, I guess you're not too bad at detective work after all, Sherlock."

And he fell silent, a dark shadow pressing his eyes black with shots of red. A weary acceptance seemed to fall over his entire countenance, mouth no longer pressed in a firm or resolute line; instead it sagged, the weight of his burden dragging it down no matter how much he tried to make it float up by filling it with alcohol.

Harry pressed his back against the wall across from Stark, sliding down it slowly while nausea twisted and churned in his stomach and his anger was doused. Tony Stark looked more broken than Harry did every time he looked in the mirror each morning, and he wasn't nearly as good at hiding his feelings as the man in front of him. But neither did he have to wonder how deep that pain went, he could hear it.

Sick with himself and feeling completely exhausted for the dying man, desperate for a way out, Harry sat silent, hoping his quite respect would take back some of the darkness blanketing Tony Stark.

Finally, something twitched and Stark spoke, "What about you then? You've had your chance to psychoanalyze me, now it's my turn." Harry said nothing in response to the change in subject, but couldn't help how his body immediately stiffened at the question, a guarded mask falling down. "You know no one's looking for you, so why are you still hanging around here," The man gestured vaguely to the entire room. "If I were you, I'd be on the first flight to Vegas."

Against his own will Harry felt his barrier drop. He just couldn't help it. The man in front of him - his voice screamed of desperation and sorrow and so much pain that Harry wondered how he could've possibly missed it before. Obviously he caught onto the larger part of it, but now he could hear the ache in his song, the smallest tremor of fear. Something akin to pity curled in Harry's stomach; that and shame at the fact that he'd had a part in causing the double toned song.

So against his will, Harry let a wry smile touch his face. A small thing, but somehow he felt it would do some good. He let his nose scrunch up in, not altogether feigned, disgust at Tony's suggestion. "Well, I guess it's a good thing you're not me then. Live in a city where I could possibly lose more memories than I already have on a daily basis? No thanks."

With a proud humming in his head, Harry watched as a similarly dry smirk touched Stark's lips. "Eh, not like you've got much to lose." Something in his face changed at those words, an odd calculating gleam entering those brown eyes. And then his demeanor switched like a light bulb flipped on. It was such a startling difference - Harry knew nothing he said could've been the cause of it.

So what caused it?

What was probably for dramatic effect Harry was sure, Tony began to stroke his beard thoughtfully, and he shifted under the fixed, scrutinizing gaze.

"So it's an ixnay on the Vegas plan then, it's too main stream anyways. No, Malibu is where it's at," he carried on with a drawn out drawl.

The sudden shift caught him off guard, Stark seeming to morph into a completely different person before him, "Uh," Harry racked through his brain for anything that would match an image of something called Malibu, drawing an annoyingly familiar big white blank, "Malibu?" he asked hesitantly.

Tony gave him another peculiar searching look before he went on, gesturing with his hands, "Yeah, you know, wide sandy beaches, beautiful sunsets, hot teenage girls just waiting for a good sob-story," he winked suggestively at Harry's disgruntled frown. "There's a reason why a guy like me lives there."

"Sounds nice I guess, better than the New York cabbies anyway," Harry offered lightly, still confused as to what exactly Stark was getting at. Malibu sounded kind of exotic in a way, well as exotic as America probably got. He could even already imagine the sound of the pulsing waves, a steady rhythm on the shores.

"I hear they've got great psych doctors by the way."

And a light bulb's little 'ding' went off in his head, echoed by an _oh _of sudden understanding_. _Harry watched Stark, stunned, as the man completely ignored him, plopping back face down into the bed of pillows.

"Is this one of those billionaire bucket list things?" Harry asked, genuinely curious with a healthy dose of suspicion on the side. "Doing huge and probably expensive random acts of kindness for the first stranger they meet?"

Stark shrugged, barely moving head to face him as he smirked, "Sure, you could say that. After all, what else is a dying and ridiculously rich bachelor with too much time on his hands supposed to do?" Here his smirk grew into a full blown grin, "Donate to charity?"

Grinning with what he knew was a ridiculous and careless smile, Harry snorted, "Only for the cameras." The voices were telling him to 'go with the flow' and this time he was going to listen.

That and it wasn't like he knew what else to do.

…

**A/N**: So, again, the little line thingy in FF Docs doesn't feel like working this fine afternoon, ugh. But anyways, a question came up and I just want to establish that this story will not have slash in it. Not only am I cruddy at writing romance period, but just personally I can't really write slash. And that's it there. So, now all of you know exactly where this story is starting. For those of you not happy, here's my reasoning: later, Harry needs some background to go with, who better than Tony Stark? That's all I can say!

And wow! You guys blew my expectations away for reviews, thank you so much! Maybe I can even aim for 200 now! My inbox was filled to the brim! Thanks so much for all of your support and I hope I can keep it coming.


	6. Chapter 6

**The Martyr's Morning**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own either Harry Potter or the Avengers, and I'm not entirely sure I want to seeing as how the current owners are doing a fabulous job with them (I refuse to believe HP is over).

* * *

**Chapter Six:**

A shot blasted through the silence, exploding and shattering the thin glass of the night's peace. With a strangled gasp Harry snapped to attention, bolting upright from his bed just as quickly as the silence fell once more, now only broken by the rapid, unsteady rhythm of rasping breaths.

Harry glanced around wildly, straining to make out the shapes moving in the inky shadows of the dark, confused and stricken with fear for a moment more, waiting for the inevitable thud of the fall. The wait seemed suspended in time, as if the moment itself was waiting with baited breath, holding its audience in suspense as seconds clawed by. But only a thin silence stretched onward, an itch on his senses.

He clenched his eyes shut against the darkness, griping the sheets and clutching the fabric between his fingers so tightly the skin around his knuckles turned white, and Harry felt his racing heart beat with an echoing thud in his chest. It pounded like a drum, steadily coming back down from a crescendo and slowing its tempo. He fixed his entire attention on that beat, blocking out everything else. _Thud, thud, thud…thud…thud. _

It was hard with the blind panic still draped over him in his hazy, sudden awareness. And the ringing; the ringing still hadn't left his ears. The skipped sound relentlessly repeating like a record as it trailed after the bullet, ripping right through his-

_No! _Harry growled furiously to himself. _No…don't go there; it was just a dream…just a dream…_

But the sound stayed, a broken record in his mind, drowning everything else out, even his heart beat. And that had to be the worst part, the sound. Harry was very good at remembering sounds and tunes and anything really. It was normally something he took secret pride in. This one particular one, though, that split second of deafening sound would not leave his memory, as much as wished it would.

Not for a while anyways.

And really he should have expected it. He had seen a man die right in front of him, not even two feet away. Regardless of the assured guilt, he had been a human being with a life and a voice and – and Harry had snuffed that right out. He wasn't sure how, but he was just as firm in his terrible realization a few days ago _was it really only a few days _as he was in this moment.

Somehow, he had caused that gun to fire.

A chill raced up his spine. He supposed, with the ensuing bedlam of the last day or two, that the memory had been held at bay, drowned out with the sheer exhaustion that had hung on Harry as he temporarily 'settled' into the Stark manor. Between Stark, his assistant Pepper (who was definitely not just an assistant), and chaos equal to an Armageddon with the aforementioned secretary's reaction to his arrival, he'd had no need to think of anything past three basic needs: food, sleep, and 'for god's sake leave me alone Tony'.

Obviously, that brief period of respite had ended. And with that, nightmares had struck.

Clutching the silk sheets closer, careful not to damage them because they were probably worth more than he was, Harry glanced to the side and caught sight of bright red numbers resting on the bedside table, squinting at them through the dull throb behind his eyes at the light. _4:52. _Groaning, he fell back against the mattress, sinking into it. For a minute he pressed the pillow around his head, wrapping it up like a taco, trying to drown awareness out with fluffy, snobby-rich-guy, feather pillows.

But the money and, for that matter, the snobbishness of the owner didn't make a lick of difference.

Slowly his senses became sharpened in the darkness. He doubted he would've got much sleep anyways, though, at this point. He couldn't even shut his eyes now. But even still, Harry laid there for a few more moments, marveling in the silence. He could hardly believe it himself, now thinking back, that he had been so…rash.

Each time he met Tony the world seemed to hit some sort of automatic fast forward button, flashing through events quicker than he could process, leaving him scrambling to keep up like he'd just tripped over the last vault in a race. Maybe that was part of his decision to come here, a split second of a mad grasp for control, to make a decision before everything went spiraling and ripping away too fast for him to do much more than blink.

In comparison, his daily routine before Stark came stumbling, or more literately haphazardly swaying like a leaf in the wind, into his life seemed to have taken decades to push through. It was sluggish and dull. And so very boring, with some key element always missing. An innate reasoning told Harry that he didn't handle dull very well.

But at the same time, just days before, his monotonous schedule had held a constant drone of background noise, the constant thrumming of New York. Whether it had been in his home or at work, day or night, it had always been there itching at the back of his mind. It was never quiet in New York, not for him anyways.

Now, as ironic as it was with the sudden moving and more excitement than he'd seen in his two months, the more he just stayed here in the dark silence of the room, the entire _house_, no humming or buzzing at all, Harry found it unnerving. The whole mansion almost felt wrong, it was so soundless. More often than not Harry found himself sitting on the balcony on the other side of the two double doors across from his bed, just to listen to the waves, to anything that wasn't Tony's awkward attempts at conversation.

At the thought Harry made no bother to hold back a groan.

Over the past few days conversations with the man had slowly been deteriorating into awkward glances and brief attempts at socializing. Harry figured the horribly failed attempts at dialogue were Pepper's fault. The woman hadn't seemed happy with how Tony had, in her eyes, simply disregarded Harry entirely that first day and found it her responsibility to rectify it.

Harry was perfectly fine with it himself, preferred it actually. The hours-long flight to Malibu, for example, had been brief to his immense relief. At most Tony Stark had been mildly interested in testing the waters of light conversation with the strange teenager he suddenly found himself alone with in the empty cabin. Prodding at him here and there with comments or questions, it was as if Harry were a mildly interesting bug that had crawled its way into the man's line if sight during a prolonged fit of boredom.

And at worst he had been completely apathetic, one moment fiddling away with whatever gadget happened to find its way into his hands and the next completely ignoring, not just Harry, but the entire world for all he cared seeing as how the same call ringtone had gone off at least five times with no reaction from the man whatsoever.

This 'worst case scenario' happened to fill in the majority of the flight time and Harry had been more than fine with it. In fact he considered the humming silence much better than any sort of conversation with a man who he'd only had two encounters with, both involving a serious hangover the next morning.

Pepper didn't agree.

Harry groaned once more, pressing his face into the pillow as far as he could. That woman could be terrifying in the right mood. And she most certainly had been when Tony stepped off the jet towing a teenager back from his business trip like a souvenir. Her hair seemed to ignite a similar fire of fury in her eyes; she had been more than just upset at the man, she had been livid.

But that had settled to a simmer beneath the surface and now Harry was left with an empty house, void of its two constant occupants most of the time. And the little other times when they were there, they always seemed to be arguing about something or another, usually, he guessed, something to do with him. Suffice to say, it was very awkward and Harry found himself hiding away whenever the two occupied the same room for more than five minutes.

But that left him alone with his thoughts and undisturbed for most of the day. And, as it seemed, that was not a good thing.

Taking one last long glance around the room and staring at the glowing numbers, Harry flipped the covers off and crept to his suite's, his_ own suites, _attached bathroom.

He might as well do something, and he didn't fancy actually having to _listen to that echo of a gunshot even one more time_ live the morning breakfast with Tony he was picturing in his head. It was uncomfortable enough just thinking it, he didn't want have to endure it too. So a trip to a city coffee shop sounded marvelous to him right about now.

And hey, it gave him a great excuse to make use of Stark's personal chauffer.

After a quick shower and a bit of exploration, Harry ducked into the garage (thanking Stark's obsession with them leading to the entire lower levels being dedicated to his cars therefore amazingly easy to find) and gave a wide eyed smile to the man leaning underneath an open hood at 5:30 in the morning.

"Happy, right?" he called out.

Happy, apparently he'd gotten it right, jerked upwards in surprise. Harry gave a sympathetic wince at the loud thud and ensuing slew of language obviously being put to good use. The chauffer's head popped back into view, glancing over in his direction briefly before focusing, open mouth and incredulously, on Harry's small wave.

"Er," Harry stepped forward, "sorry, you know, about the scare. Yeah, um, remember me?" Happy nodded once, eyes flashing towards a watch on his wrist. Now Harry grinned widely, "Can I grab a ride?"

Tony did say he could make himself at home. Employees were definitely fair game.

As Harry left his room though, he hadn't caught sight of the small glass shards that remained of the bedside lamps' shattered light bulbs.

…

"You've got to be kidding me," Harry muttered, arms crossed and glaring heatedly in front of him. "I can't believe this – I mean, really?"

Wandering was something Harry was very good at. It wasn't like you could be _bad _at it really, but he just had a knack for being at the right place at the right time for anything and everything. There had been that small money prize he'd won the week after getting out of the hospital for walking into a store and being their some-odd number customer. And while he certainly didn't need, or particularly want, the five years supply of doughnuts, he was all too happy to take the money prize.

But he also knew it wasn't a coincidence.

Most of the time, Harry could recognize the tunes singing softly in a corner of his mind, gently pulling and pushing him in certain directions. Only once had he ignored them, and look what happened then; he'd had a fifteen minute debate over jell-o.

So he learned to follow them wherever they led him. Harry would even chase them down another dark alley at midnight if he had to – it was how he met Stark after all. He trusted the voices implicitly and without exception; they had been with him since the beginning and had yet to lead him wrong. They just resonated with something inside of him, an integral part of who he was.

But they hadn't led him to the small coffee shop squeezed between two giant apartment buildings. And that bothered him. Not because of the absence of the voices, though the feeling left him a bit empty, but rather the presence of something else entirely. It was the same something that held him back from following after Stark that first time.

And Harry didn't even know how to describe it.

The voices were just that, voices; something, not tangible, but real and explainable. They were right there and he could hear them. Voices were something understandable, relatable in a way. They had a strict, distinct pattern and were clearly defined.

Sure explaining it to a stranger or even someone as intelligent as Tony Stark would make him sound like a complete lunatic and earn him a first class flight, this time, to the nearest insane asylum, but the important part was that at least _he_ could rationalize it to himself. Somewhat.

This – _feeling, _for a lack of a better word, not so much.

It was like the voices and nothing like them at the same time. They were both apart of him in a distinct way, but the feelings stretched deeper, resonating within him on a level that even the music couldn't reach; that part where nothing but the barest and most basic urges moved him, on the simplest state of thinking. So it would stand to reason that he could trust these feelings just as much if not more than he did his strange voices.

He'd only felt it twice though, and neither time resulted in something he wanted to experience ever again.

And because life just felt like squirting lemon juice right in his eyes, Harry was left standing outside Joe's Cup 'a Joe coffee shop in the middle of a street, having an internal debate with himself.

"I just wanted some coffee, really, that's it," he threw the hawaiian-shirted Joe a dirty look. "Not some weird, voodoo _thing _to ruin my breakfast. Is that too much to ask for? I don't think so." It was mocking him; those beady black eyes were making_ fun_ of him. "Fine, let's see _you_ follow the strange voodoo _stuff, _coward," he muttered, squinting to look through the windows.

And the joint seemed perfectly normal. Well, almost normal. It looked like any other coffee shop that he'd been too, but it lacked one vital thing. People. There were hardly any seats filled, and most of those that were filled had people, old people, that looked as if they could have simply died there and were never bothered to be removed by the staff.

It was suspicious, definitely. The question was, was it suspicious enough to warrant abandoning his breakfast for another ten minutes while he searched for another shop. Harry thought for a moment, _debatable. _His stomach loudly protested.

"Alright, alright you bloody thing," he scowled, pushing the door open, "I'm going in."

The door chimed happily above him. And because he felt like being different today, he decided to look at the silver lining. At least there were no lines.

"What would you like?" The woman at the counter drawled, eyes never leaving the paperback novel in her hands.

Indecision gripped him for a beat, his mind scrambling to grab to something familiar. _You've got to be kidding. _This was definitely not what he needed. Again. Harry latched onto the thought of Mrs. Finks. "Can I have black, two sugars please?"

And the book was down. Clara, apparently from her tag, raised a brow. "That's it? That's all you want?" Harry wasn't sure if it was the bright pink lipstick and gaudy earrings, or just the situation entirely, but he found himself hard-pressed not to scowl at the woman.

"Uh, yes?" _Uh, duh?_

She shrugged, entered a few numbers, and held out a receipt. "That'll be two dollars and fifty-two cents." The scowl found itself flitting across his face. It was definitely the pink; her nails were painted the exact same, eye-searing color.

He dug the cash out of his wallet, thanking whoever was listening that he still had a few bills tucked away. He'd completely forgotten about his now extremely limited funds. Sighing, Harry plopped down on the nearest bench. Looked like this day would double for job hunting.

"You look horrible."

Harry jerked, barely managing to restrain himself from whipping wildly around with the fact that the voice had come from _right behind him. _As it was, his head still twitched to the side just enough to come within inches of a small, pixie nose with the most outlandish glasses he'd ever seen perched on the end and large, reflective pools of silver behind them.

"Oh my, you look much worse up close."

Harry flinched backwards, a byproduct of both the uncomfortably close proximity and the _voice. _It was the strangest, most amazing thing. It was an airy melody, drifting through its notes as if blown by the wind, swaying to its own calm beats. Almost ethereal in its quality, full of softly chiming bells.

And it wasn't that it sounded familiar, so much as he _felt _it should be familiar. Harry barely managed to repress the urge to clutch his ears and flinch away from the sound, hissing like a wet cat faced with a hose. Within two sentences he already felt a pounding headache pressing on the edge of his awareness. It was such a severe comparison to the sweet melody that it left Harry hearing double.

"Now you've gone all funny. Your face, it's all scrunched up." Harry blinked, coming back to himself and jumping back once more, his back making a painful collision with the wooden wall behind him. Large, luminous silver eyes were staring, not intently, but almost…_dreamily _at him. And they were close. Uncomfortably close. "You know, if you aren't careful, your face is going to stick like that."

"Um, wh-what?" His voice cracked.

"Your face is going to stick all funny like." Those large eyes drifted shut briefly with a firm nod, "You should really fix that. It's not very pleasant to look at. Not at all."

_What? _And he wasn't even able to voice that. How sad.

Apparently noticing his state of nearly permanent mental absence, the girl who owned the painfully familiar chiming melodic voice, and she was just a girl maybe his own age, walked around to where Harry sat comatose to take the seat in front of him.

And what a bizarre sight she was. Those large, disconcerting grey eyes that flashed silver in the light, were framed by the most ridiculous pair of glasses Harry had almost ever seen, _had _ever seen. Large and bright red with small feathers sticking out the top and multicolored beads hanging off the ends, it was no wonder they took up most of the focus on her face. Add that to her long, light blond hair that reached down almost to touch the seat, she nearly passed off as some strange type of hippie if not for the red plated school uniform she wore and the small, glass blue butterfly pendant clipped carefully into her hair.

Overall, it was the strangest sight Harry was ever privileged to be witness to.

And this bloody _migraine. _

Pushing the pain to a corner of his mind, Harry gathered enough of his wits and strung together two words, "My face?" he replied blankly.

The girl nodded decisively, glasses slipping down just a bit as her head bobbed. "Not pleasant at all. But that's alright, it's getting better. I'm sure it was just a bit of bad air. Every time I pass by this street it does awful things to my hair, maybe it does the same thing to you. Just with your face instead."

Harry praised waitresses everywhere when, at that moment, Clara strutted up and set down his steaming cup in front of him. With a pop of her gum and a twisting click of her heels she left the bench with a short 'enjoy', before retreating to her book. But not, Harry noted, without a strange sort of expression marring her face at the sight of the girl in front of him. The glance hadn't been one of incredulous unfamiliarity, much like he supposed his own had been at first sight, but rather of resigned reluctance crossed with disparaging acknowledgement.

So this girl was a regular then.

Harry turned his attention back to the girl just in time to catch the tail of a dreamy grin she directed towards the waitress. The pained grimace she received in reply was just a bit too funny for Harry to maintain his own expression and he cracked a grin.

"Oh, see that's much better."

To his credit, Harry managed not to wince at the sound. "…Thanks?"

The same bright smile, soft and cheerful, was directed towards him this time as the girl earnestly replied, "Oh, you're very welcome. It's always nice to find someone to talk too. Most people don't like talking to me at all. They tend to avoid it actually, I think. Though, that might just be the air again," a shrewd look was directed at the coffee sitting innocently in front of him, steam still gently wafting above it. It looked well practiced enough that Harry had the impression the girl was very sure in her idea on where the source of the air and its apparent problems came from. He was glad for the shift in attention though; Harry felt somewhat awkward about the girl's admittance to being avoided, or rather, the ease with which she pointed it out.

Her gaze shifted back to his face suddenly, "You're new here, aren't you?"

Harry was startled, "Well, I guess yeah. I've only been in town for about a day or two now. But how'd you know? I haven't seen you before, have I?"

She shook her head, a dreamy expression still fixed, "No, you just seemed a little lost is all."

Heat flushed to the tips of his ears, "That obvious, was it?" he mumbled.

But she merely reached over to pat the back of hand gently, "That's okay. Everyone looks a bit lost in this city at some point, even when they think they know where they're going. And besides," the girl brightened considerably, "I like obvious people; they're great at charades."

Harry felt guilty as the thought crossed his mind, but he felt that he knew exactly why people tended to avoid talking to this girl. Speaking of which, Harry fiddled with his cup, feeling incredibly awkwardly, "Uh, I didn't catch your name by the way. I'm Harry, Harry Patterson."

"Luna," Luna practically beamed at him. "So did you come here with your girlfriend?"

The question took Harry by surprise, and he almost managed to douse himself with his coffee as he shook his head frantically, blushing and stuttering, "Oh, uh, no I'm not waiting for a, uh, girlfriend or anything. I just came to New York with a," he paused briefly with a thought, "a friend, I guess."

"Oh, so are you waiting for your friend then?" Luna twisted in her seat to fix the door with excitement at the prospect of two people to talk too, as if Harry's 'friend' were about to walk in at that very moment. Harry snorted at the thought. As if Tony would ever buy his brew at a place like this, much less in person. The man was almost as nit-picky with his coffee, and where he got it, as Mrs. Finks was with hers; almost, but not quite.

"No, I came alone. Tony's not really much of a morning person." Harry grinned wryly. Pepper wasn't either, to be honest, but from what he'd seen that might've just been because she had to deal with Tony not being a morning person.

"Why did you come here, then?"

He shrugged, "I was just a bit hungry. My friend's not much of a cook so-"

Luna giggled, looking like he'd told an incredibly funny joke, waving him off. "Not here, silly, _here – _why did you move to Malibu?"

The question caught him off guard, coming from this girl, and Harry found that he didn't really know how to answer it. It wasn't the first time he'd stopped to wonder that exact same question, and it wouldn't be the last time either he was sure. But those big, doe eyes hadn't blinked once and he found himself giving Luna the best explanation he'd been telling himself since he came. "I don't really know, actually. Just needed a change of scenery I guess. I've lived in a big city, New York is where I came from, and the beaches were pretty appealing compared to the cabbie drivers." He thought back to his onetime experience with a dry smile.

Luna, though, seemed to have found something in his words.

"You're looking for something, aren't you?" She didn't wait for a response, grinning widely and looking as if she was the cat who had just caught the canary, continuing on in the same breath, "That's why you looked a bit lost, right? You're very lucky, though. You seem to know where you need to be. Most people don't pay attention to where they need to be, they only look at where what they're looking for might be. It's all about location, really."

Harry wondered, briefly, if Luna could somehow read minds. It was...disconcerting to say the least how accurate she seemed to be. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I guess I'm looking for something, kind of. But it's not really something that you can go find in a 'lost and found' box unfortunately," he said bitterly.

Luna patted his hand again, nodding wisely, and Harry felt like a child being lectured on why the sky was blue, "That's alright. It doesn't really matter, remember? It's all about location."

The clock hanging just behind their table dinged lightly, seven times, and Luna glanced at it eyes widening. Attention flickering back to Harry briefly, she grabbed the napkin sitting in front of her new acquaintance, whipped out a pen from somewhere, and hurriedly scrawled something down on the front. Luna shoved it into his hands, beaming.

Harry stared down at the delicate writing of the number on his napkin in a daze, blinking slowly at the girl in front of him as Luna snatched her previously unseen purse and turned to leave. Distantly he noted that the bag had what seemed to be radishes attached to either end.

"Thank you very much for talking with me Harry," Luna said, with her dreamy expression almost solemn as she smiled at him, "You have very good ears, the best I've seen. And it was almost like having a friend."

Harry felt distinctly uncomfortable again, even as he returned her smile hesitantly. "Thanks Luna and, uh, you too."

She laughed - a delicate, bell like echo trilling after it and Harry was hit by the impression once more that this was so _familiar_ that it was nearly crushing him so not recognize it, frustration welling up. But Luna was speaking again, "My ears aren't as nice as yours are, Harry, but thank you. And I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for if you keep staying in the right places."

She twirled and skipped to the doorway, pausing to flash Clara one last dreamy smile, receiving a wary grunt in return, before she paused at the door. Turning back, those large grey eyes focused onto Harry with such intensity that they seemed to almost go through him, catching sight of something beyond what was actually there. A chill raced down his spine, and that _feeling _stirred in his gut.

Luna's expression was fixed, frozen for heartbeat. "I think you should stay away from blue. It's not really your color," she finally parted with, disappearing out the door in the next second.

Harry watched her leave, a new sense of foreboding settling in. Was she the reason he was drawn here? If that was the case, however odd it was, he wasn't sure he wanted anything to do with girl. He could drop her number in the trash and most likely never see her again.

He glanced at the delicate scrawl. Then again she hadn't seemed bad, abnormal most definitely, but in a way it felt…nice to be able to talk to her, like he could say anything and all she would do was smile and pat his hand again. It was a good feeling.

Harry stood to leave, folding the napkin and gently placing it in his pocket. It couldn't hurt to keep it, just in case. And knowing more than one person in the city who wasn't a self-inflated, terminally ill billionaire would be a nice change.

He glanced down at the untouched, now cooled cup of coffee on the table, grimacing. Maybe he was more of a tea guy – he was British after all. Walking out the door, Harry managed to catch once last glance at Clara's face as she watched him leave and he grinned.

It was a pained, '_I know, right?'_

…

"Tony."

He clicked the enter key, leaning back comfortably in his chair and watching as the screen flashed away. He couldn't find anything while he was in New York, but hadn't had the full capabilities of what his tower offered then.

"Tony, what was that all about?"

Still unusual was that there had been absolutely nothing he could find on the kid - _nothing_. Granted, at the time, when his interest had first been peaked, Tony had run the name and face through his systems as a passing fancy, to distract himself as much as he hated to admit it. He hadn't expected to find much; the kid had _amnesia _of all things after all.

Even now Tony was hard pressed to suppress a ridiculous grin at the thought. _How Hollywood worthy was that!_

When the results had finally come through, however, he hadn't expected what had cropped up. Maybe that was a little exaggerated; he considered the possibility of course, but more out of respect for the stack of paper back mystery novels Pepper kept secretly stashed in her closet underneath the shoeboxes.

It was a giant, white slate. Nothing was there. Not a single shred of evidence on anything from before the kid had quite literately popped up out of the ground in New York Central Park like a British gopher (did they even have gophers?). Not even his personalized facial recognition algorithm hacked into several 'classified' databases could get a hit. Though, in his opinion, 'classified' was a more of an if-you-can-go-ahead open challenge.

Point was that the flat blue screen in front of him had been it; zip, zilch, numero zero, a big fat nadda stuck on it. And that was just unacceptable.

"Tony look at me."A gentle, firm hand cupped his chin and guided his gaze away from the holographic screen to face full of masked worry. Pepper's warm brown eyes melted him every time, seeping right through the cracks and was something he both loved and, well hated was a strong word, but _disliked_ at the same time with equal vigor.

He briefly wondered if she had any idea. Probably; that all-knowing quirk was another tick on the love-hate relationship list of the woman's qualities.

Fighting off a scowl, Tony just as gently removed the delicate fingers and met her stare. The scowl must've slipped a bit. Pepper's lips thinned slightly, turning down at the corners. "Tony what is it? What's going on?" Now it tried to fight its way back to the surface once again. Pepper was too smart for her own good sometimes – for his too.

Eyes turning briefly to the screen once more, nothing had popped up yet which he half expected, Tony flashed the red-head an easy grin. And it was easy, ridiculously so. He'd expected it to be harder, actually, even kind of hoped it would be. That would have meant two things: one, that his practicing in front of the mirror wasn't a complete and embarrassing waste of time, and two that he might have actually changed for the better in the past year. Guess old habits die hard after all; the drinking was proof enough of that, though. _Once a game, always a game, I guess. _

"You gotta be specific for that one Pep. What do you mean - handing in my school work like a good student, which, might I point out, is something that you've been nagging me about doing for months so, really, there's no need to be concerned or-"

Pepper sighed, "The kid tony, what's with the kid. Last time I checked you wouldn't even adopt a fish, much less a teenager. And in case that busybody brain of yours didn't know, those are generally more difficult to take of than a goldfish." Tony felt he should be offended on principle at the look he was faced with. Honestly, he wasn't five.

"That has nothing to do with this Pep, and really, who wants a _fish _for a pet. They're so…" he thought for a moment, nose wrinkling in disgust, "_smelly._"

Pepper huffed, rubbing the bridge of her nose wearily, "It's like dealing with a child," she muttered. "They only smell when you don't take care of them, which you didn't. And it brings me back to my point, Tony. Why has there been a kid sleeping in one of our guest bedrooms for the past two nights?"

Tony flicked his fingers towards the screen, minimizing all of the results, or lack thereof. "Don't think of him like a fish, Peps," he replied, "Think of Harry more like… a stray cat."

"_Tony." _

"Independent, stubborn streak a mile-wide, but with those big eyes you just can't resist-"

For the second time Tony found his gaze forcefully redirected towards Pepper. Only now she seemed more annoyed than concerned; which was better, definitely better. Tony didn't need Pepper to be concerned, couldn't have her concerned. Concerned would lead to prying into things that didn't need to be pried in to. And annoyance was easier to play to anyway. "Fine," he said, "Think of him more like a side project." Half true. The traitorous part of his brain he'd been so successfully drowning out, almost literately, whispered _more like a distraction. _

He squashed it down ruthlessly.

But apparently annoyed had stepped quite cheerfully into anger's territory. Pepper bristled. "He's a human being, Tony, not one of your projects that you can just play with until you get bored. He-"

Tony stood abruptly, grabbing Pepper gently by her shoulder's as she continued, her face pinching in unconcealed frustration and worry. Worry for who, or really even why, Tony didn't know. But the effect was instant as she stopped talking, searching his face questioningly. "Pepper, relax," he said, "It's not a big deal. He's just here to stay for-"

"How long?"

Tony halted, faltering a bit. "Its – let's just say it's up to the jury." Pepper wasn't impressed, a scowl marring her features.

"I've been asking you about Harry for the past two days, Tony, and you still haven't told me anything. That usually means something's wrong." So that's why she looked worried. The pinched look softened, blending into a mix of concern and impatience. "So talk to me, what's wrong. Who is he?"

Pepper couldn't possibly know the double-edged feelings that her questions caused to squirm in his stomach – _crushing despair, sick emptiness swallowing him whole_. She didn't know that they were two completely separate parts to something bigger. How could she? And more importantly, Tony intended to keep it that way. She couldn't know what those two pieces fit together to make.

And damn anyone else who told him otherwise.

But he could pacify her with half of the whole. Sighing, Tony sat back down, "His name is Harry Patterson," he briefly smirked at her look of annoyance, this was nothing new, "and I met him coming home from a club." One more tidbit of information to go into the 'do-no-tell-Pepper-box' was the circumstances in how he met the kid. That didn't need to see the light of day - ever.

Pepper groaned, "What did you do Tony?"

He frowned, a twinge of mock offense coloring his voice, "Why do you always assume _I _did something? I was completely innocent - this time. Through extenuating circumstances, none of which were illegal, I needed a place to crash and he offered me his. Twice."

"So?"

Now Tony let loose a devilish grin, genuine and probably inappropriately enthusiastic, "Harry's got amnesia. Can't remember a thing past waking up in a hospital over two months ago."

Pepper's eyes widened, "What?" she gasped. But despite her surprise, she sharpened in quickly to the crux of the matter, suspicious, "That's awful Tony - so stop smiling - but that still doesn't answer what he's doing here?" Blue eyes flickered briefly to the screen she'd ignored; until now. Pepper was definitely too intelligent for her own good.

Tony shrugged, leaning back and completely shutting down the screen with a flick of his hand. "He's here because I offered to help him. Beats what he had going for him in New York anyway. Honestly, the police wouldn't be able to find their way out of a paper bag, much less this kid's history." If he couldn't, they had a snowball's chance in #!*% doing it.

Pepper spoke softly now, skeptically replying, "So you decided it was a good idea to bring him here Tony? You're doing a good thing by trying to help him – god knows what posses you when you choose to do them like this – but what about Harry's family? Don't you think someone's going to be looking for him?"

"Pepper," he spoke seriously and she looked at him, startled, "He'd been in the hospital for a month and out of it for just as long. I don't think anyone is looking for him." Her brows scrunched in the beginnings of a protest, "Trust me." And she fell silent.

For a minute she said nothing, just staring at him. Finally the red-head heaved a heavy sigh, bringing up a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, "Fine," he _really_ tried not to grin at her disapproving glower, "but what do you want me to tell the press? If they find out about this, the tabloids are going to have a field day and reporters are going to be banging on the door with questions about long-lost kids."

Tony waved her off, with a snort and a twisted smirk. "Just tell them it's a charity gig. They love that stuff and besides, it'll be good press for the Expo."

Pepper rolled her eyes, smiling back with that same mixture of exasperated fondness that he'd become so familiar with seeing, "Of course. We could use as much of that as possible, seeing as how you don't help it any. Have you seen him this morning anyway?"

Here, Tony glowered, huffing. "Yes, he stole my chauffer."

Pepper didn't deign that with a response, just snorted and turned to leave. But she hesitated, only slightly, her eyes holding onto his and trailing over his features for the briefest of moments. Tony could practically hear the gears whizzing about in her head – too many years of working under a Stark had taught her too many lessons on looking for the right signs, the smallest of giveaways that 'no, nothing is alright'.

But Tony had many more years of practice to hide it well, behind a disarming grin and bright eyes that were always looking ahead. So the blue eyes only paused slightly, before turning and leaving, a quiet relief settling inside their depths. Pepper left unaware, she left without a clue and Tony wasn't sure if he praised the fact or hated it with his entire being.

So he sat there long after Pepper left, just thinking. He'd been doing that a lot lately, and it was becoming a habit, one he wasn't altogether fond of in the least bit. Thinking, for the first time _Afghanistan _in a long while, wasn't healthy for his mental stability at the moment, considering.

Abruptly, rage swelled inside of him, clouding and burning through his thoughts like a rapid heat wave caught in the crest of its jump. And as quickly as it came, it faded, leaving him feeling drained and just – just tired. Tony was past that stage. He was dying; he knew there was no way around it this time, knew it was inevitable. And now that he'd accepted that, for the first time since he'd felt the phantom pains in the arc, he felt empty.

Tony wasn't entirely sure how dying was supposed to feel. It was painful, that was for sure, but on the emotional level that he usually avoided even touching with a fifty-foot pole he wasn't sure if he should be feeling this empty. Was it just another part of growing up emotionally stunted, or was he just as screwed up as everybody thought he was. The most he could muster was a deep bitterness at leaving Pepper, just when something was happening between them, something he cherished. He lessened the hurt with the firm knowledge that he wasn't leaving her with nothing. In fact, he was leaving her everything.

_That's not going to mean anything to her, Stark. _

He scowled as Harry's words echoed in his head. Tony wasn't sure if the kid was aware of it, probably not as he seemed to carry on fine hours later and had the memory of a toothpick, but he'd taken to avoiding the teenager after their conversation that first day had erupted into somewhat of an argument. It was his right to deal with his _death_ the way he saw fit; he didn't need any brat to tell him otherwise, regardless of any secret that held them together.

_Giving her a company is not going to mean anything if you don't tell her. _

Well it was going to have to. He had no intention of letting Pepper, or Rhodey for that matter, know anything about his condition. Tony had his reasons and they were good enough for him, better than good enough. The deeply buried part of Tony's mind, the one that craved for the comfort of Pepper, of the only person who would truly care to know, realized the guiltier reason he had in offering Harry a place in Malibu. So that he _wouldn't _have to tell her and wouldn't have to be alone; he would at least have someone who knew he was dying, even if it was a complete stranger, someone who could understand and not see him any differently because they didn't even know him.

And that it would have to be enough.

_Harry's face was livid, a strange mix of disbelief and outrage, "You can't lie to her until you die. It's not fair to Pepper, and it's not fair to you. You tell her soon, Stark, or I will."_

And damn Harry for telling him otherwise.

* * *

**A/N: **Ok, yeah, so I'm maybe kind of alive! Hoorah! Sorry for such a long wait but my anonymous friend is no longer available for me to bounce ideas off of or help beta read this so it came out a lot slower. But at least its a good long chapter for you guys! I can't believe when I finished I went back and checked and this thing was like fifteen pages in word! It was supposed to be two chapter, but the first chapter, where I was going to do Harry's introduction to Malibu, did not want to be written or even come into exhistance. So I compromised and took a little bit of that and put it into the beauty you've just read above.

Sorry also to all of my fabulous reviewers, I didn't get a chance to respond to your reviews this capter but if you do review, next time I'll make a point to respond to them! So I dropped a few big hints here in this chapter, and did you guys expect Luna? I just love her character so much and I hope I got her right. You don't know how hard it was not to mention nargles at least _once _ during the entire conversation. hint: Luna gives a hint! And do you guys know what Harry's other feeling is? Everone seems to think its eviil...see if you can find the connection (I forget sometimes that not everyone is in my head...).

Thanks so much for stickin' with me you guys, this is my best story yet and I'm glad people actually like it! Review for confindence points!


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